A clear understanding of what we know, don't know, and can't know should guide any reasonable approach to managing financial risk, yet the most widely used measure in finance today--Value at Risk, or VaR--reduces these risks to a single number, creating a false sense of security among risk managers, executives, and regulators. This book introduces a more realistic and holistic framework called KuU --the K nown, the u nknown, and the U nknowable--that enables one to conceptualize the different kinds of financial risks and design effective strategies for managing them. Bringing together contributions by leaders in finance and economics, this book pushes toward robustifying policies, portfolios, contracts, and organizations to a wide variety of KuU risks. Along the way, the strengths and limitations of "quantitative" risk management are revealed. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Ashok Bardhan, Dan Borge, Charles N. Bralver, Riccardo Colacito, Robert H. Edelstein, Robert F. Engle, Charles A. E. Goodhart, Clive W. J. Granger, Paul R. Kleindorfer, Donald L. Kohn, Howard Kunreuther, Andrew Kuritzkes, Robert H. Litzenberger, Benoit B. Mandelbrot, David M. Modest, Alex Muermann, Mark V. Pauly, Til Schuermann, Kenneth E. Scott, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Richard J. Zeckhauser. Introduces a new risk-management paradigm Features contributions by leaders in finance and economics Demonstrates how "killer risks" are often more economic than statistical, and crucially linked to incentives Shows how to invest and design policies amid financial uncertainty

A clear understanding of what we know, don't know, and can't know should guide any reasonable approach to managing financial risk, yet the most widely used measure in finance today--Value at Risk, or VaR--reduces these risks to a single number, creating a false sense of security among risk managers, executives, and regulators. This book introduces a more realistic and holistic framework called KuU --the K nown, the u nknown, and the U nknowable--that enables one to conceptualize the different kinds of financial risks and design effective strategies for managing them. Bringing together contributions by leaders in finance and economics, this book pushes toward robustifying policies, portfolios, contracts, and organizations to a wide variety of KuU risks. Along the way, the strengths and limitations of "quantitative" risk management are revealed. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Ashok Bardhan, Dan Borge, Charles N. Bralver, Riccardo Colacito, Robert H. Edelstein, Robert F. Engle, Charles A. E. Goodhart, Clive W. J. Granger, Paul R. Kleindorfer, Donald L. Kohn, Howard Kunreuther, Andrew Kuritzkes, Robert H. Litzenberger, Benoit B. Mandelbrot, David M. Modest, Alex Muermann, Mark V. Pauly, Til Schuermann, Kenneth E. Scott, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Richard J. Zeckhauser. Introduces a new risk-management paradigm Features contributions by leaders in finance and economics Demonstrates how "killer risks" are often more economic than statistical, and crucially linked to incentives Shows how to invest and design policies amid financial uncertainty

Knowable knowns; Unknowable Unknowns is an 82 page creative attempt to merge multiple disparate threads of knowledge together in a sometimes cohesive, sometimes shrouded and thought provoking format. A sprawling mesh of illustrations and writings whose purpose is to point the reader in various often contradictory directions in an attempt to challenge and provoke self contemplation.

Albert Einstein once remarked that behind all observable things lay something quite unknowable. This book explores that special territory perceived by Einstein: where the unknown takes over from everything that is understandable, familiar, explicable

We are interested in the evolution of hominin diets for several reasons. One is the fundamental concern over our present-day eating habits and the consequences of our societal choices, such as obesity prevalent in some cultures and starvation in others. Another is that humans have learned to feed themselves in extremely varied environments, and these adaptations, which are fundamentally different from those of our closest biological relatives, have to have had historical roots of varying depth. The third, and the reason why most paleoanthropologists are interested in this question, is that a species' trophic level and feeding adaptations can have a strong effect on body size, locomotion, "life history strategies", geographic range, habitat choice, and social behavior. Diet is key to understanding the ecology and evolution of our distant ancestors and their kin, the early hominins. A study of the range of foods eaten by our progenitors underscores just how unhealthy many of our diets are today. This volume brings together authorities from disparate fields to offer new insights into the diets of our ancestors. Paleontologists, archaeologists, primatologists, nutritionists and other researchers all contribute pieces to the puzzle. This volume has at its core four main sections: · Reconstructed diets based on hominin fossils--tooth size, shape, structure, wear, and chemistry, mandibular biomechanics · Archaeological evidence of subsistence--stone tools and modified bones · Models of early hominin diets based on the diets of living primates--both human and non-human, paleoecology, and energetics · Nutritional analyses and their implications for evolutionary medicine New techniques for gleaning information from fossil teeth, bones, and stone tools, new theories stemming from studies of paleoecology, and new models coming from analogy with modern humans and other primates all contribute to our understanding. When these approaches are brought together, they offer an impressive glimpse into the lives of our distant ancestors. The contributions in this volume explore the frontiers of our knowledge in each of these disciplines as they address the knowns, the unknowns, and the unknowables of the evolution of hominin diets.

It's What You Don't Know That Counts Discover the important roles chance and uncertainty play insuccessful strategic planning. In this ingenious work, author RalphD. Stacey shows managers how their companies can benefit from theunexpected developments that impact their business and how they canprepare to creatively leverage the opportunities such developmentspresent. He explains how an appreciation of conflict and teamdialogue can help managers discover and build on the innate energyof their organizations. And he illustrates his theories withreal-world examples from Sony, Kodak, Federal Express and othernoted market innovators.

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker

While fulfilling his dead father's dream of creating a prosperous farm in California, Joseph Wayne comes to believe that a magnificent tree on the farm embodies his father's spirit. His brothers and their families share in Joseph's prosperity andthe farm flourishes - until one brother, scared by Joseph's pagan belief, kills the tree and brings disease and famine on the farm. Set in familiar Steinbeck country, TO A GOD UNKOWN is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control theforces of nature and to understand the ways of God.

When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labor? When does chancebecome choice? And when does fact become fiction?

Eric Muller has been trying to hack the girlfriend problem for half his life. As a teenage geek, he discovered his gift for programming computers-but his attempts to understand women only confirm that he's better at writing code than connecting with human beings. Brilliant, neurotic, and lonely, Eric spends high school in the solitary glow of a screen. By his early twenties, Eric's talent has made him a Silicon Valley millionaire. He can coax girls into bed with ironic remarks and carefully timed intimacies, but hiding behind wit and empathy gets lonely, and he fears that love will always be out of reach. So when Eric falls for the beautiful, fiercely opinionated Maya Marcom, and she miraculously falls for him too, he's in new territory. But the more he learns about his perfect girlfriend's unresolved past, the further Eric's obsessive mind spirals into confusion and doubt. Can he reconcile his need for order and logic with the mystery and chaos of love? This brilliant debut ushers Eric Muller-flawed, funny, irresistibly endearing-into the pantheon of unlikely heroes. With an unblinking eye for the absurdities and horrors of contemporary life, Gabriel Roth gives us a hilarious and heartbreaking meditation on self consciousness, memory, and love.